He Wishes For The Cloths Of Heaven

He Wishes For The Cloths Of Heaven

Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths,

Enwrought with golden and silver light,

The blue and the dim and the dark cloths

Of night and light and the half-light,I would spread the cloths under your feet:

But I, being poor, have only my dreams;

I have spread my dreams under your feet;

Tread softly because you tread on my dreams. 

                                

                                     William Butler Yeats

                                

Poetry Friday, two poems

Early this morning, Laurence built this block city on the kitchen floor. Robert Stevenson's poem, Block City, immediately came to my mind.

Block City

What are you able to build with your blocks?
Castles and palaces, temples and docks.
Rain may keep raining, and others go roam,
But I can be happy and building at home.

Let the sofa be mountains, the carpet be sea,
There I'll establish a city for me:
A kirk and a mill and a palace beside,
And a harbour as well where my vessels may ride.

Great is the palace with pillar and wall,
A sort of a tower on the top of it all,
And steps coming down in an orderly way
To where my toy vessels lie safe in the bay.

This one is sailing and that one is moored:
Hark to the song of the sailors aboard!
And see, on the steps of my palace, the kings
Coming and going with presents and things!

Yet as I saw it, I see it again,
The kirk and the palace, the ships and the men,
And as long as I live and where'er I may be,
I'll always remember my town by the sea.

A few nights ago, Lydia was reading The Wind in the Willows to the younger boys. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, The Children's Hour, resonated through my head as I snapped some pictures.

I recently bought from Chinaberry this copy of The Wind in the Willows, autographed by the illustrator Robert Ingpen. The pictures are plentiful and gorgeous! They convey the English atmosphere so well.

In the last picture she is reading from our very ragged copy of Tove Jansson, Finn Family Moomintroll. We are big fans of the Moomintrolls!

The Children's Hour

Between the dark and the daylight,
When the night is beginning to lower,
Comes a pause in the day's occupations,
That is known as the Children's Hour.

I hear in the chamber above me
The patter of little feet,
The sound of a door that is opened,
And voices soft and sweet.

From my study I see in the lamplight,
Descending the broad hall stair,
Grave Alice, and laughing Allegra,
And Edith with golden hair.

A whisper, and then a silence:
Yet I know by their merry eyes
They are plotting and planning together
To take me by surprise.

A sudden rush from the stairway,
A sudden raid from the hall!
By three doors left unguarded
They enter my castle wall!

They climb up into my turret
O'er the arms and back of my chair;
If I try to escape, they surround me;
They seem to be everywhere.

They almost devour me with kisses,
Their arms about me entwine,
Till I think of the Bishop of Bingen
In his Mouse-Tower on the Rhine!

Do you think, o blue-eyed banditti,
Because you have scaled the wall,
Such an old mustache as I am
Is not a match for you all!

I have you fast in my fortress,
And will not let you depart,
But put you down into the dungeon
In the round-tower of my heart.

And there will I keep you forever,
Yes, forever and a day,
Till the walls shall crumble to ruin,
And moulder in dust away!

Poetry Friday

If I were rain and rain were me

We'd make an awkward company.

I'd make rain rise and never fall,

And no one would get wet at all

Excepting rain itself would get

A most absorbing kind of wet.

I don't expect rain will agree

That I be rain and it be me.

An Awkward Arrangement, Jane Yolen

Poetry Friday

After reading the book Spring, An Alphabet Acrostic , the three youngest boys wrote their own acrostic poem.

Joy, from Laurence (He traced the Lamb from the book A Catholic How-to-Draw)

Nest, from Dominique

Life, from Matthias

Poetry Friday, September is a Stallion

For Lydia!

September is a Stallion

September is a stallion
With a flowing, tawny mane
Who has never know a bridle
Nor a rider, nor a reign;
A steed of bronze and amber
Whose bright hooves strike the ground
With a sharp staccato rhythm
And an icy ringing sound.
September is a mustang
From wild, untrammeled skies
Who gallops down the earthways
With wind enchanted eyes.

-Virginia Moran Evans